Anshel Pfeffer - Haaretz - For now at least, the public mood in the Arab world is shifting only gradually, so lip service to Palestinian aspirations and token resistance to “normalization” continue. Which is why the event in Bahrain is so important: It’s another sign of Arab leaders bringing the burgeoning secret relationship into the open.
This doesn’t necessarily spell ultimate disaster for the Palestinians. Their nosedive down to the bottom of the global agenda is not yet final. Kushner and the rest of President Donald Trump’s Middle East team may all be gone in 18 months and the next U.S. administration could reverse their policies. The Europeans may sort out their own internal problems and become a diplomatic force again. The Arab leaders’ calculations could change. Israel may yet come under pressure once again to make concessions and the two-state solution could be back on the table.
But that is all in an uncertain future. For now, Bahrain is happening. [bz]

AMI AYALON, GILEAD SHER and ORNI PETRUSCHKA - Politico Magazine - By putting economics first while ignoring the end game, Trump is repeating a colossal mistake: resuming talks without defining the end goal. For both Palestinians and Israelis, that goal should be ending the occupation and establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel within 1967 borders, with necessary land swaps. Unless both parties and the mediating power state this clearly at the outset, the expectations gap will breed mistrust. Thus, sitting down together will be futile. This will lead to further disillusionment—and escalating violence. {bz]

Tamara Nassar - The Electronic Intifada - In an interview with Reuters, US presidential adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner said that to reveal the political component of the Trump administration’s peace proposals simultaneously with the economic aspect would have been “very, very hard” for people to digest.
The choice to reveal the economic plan first was due to its “less controversial” nature, he added. (...) [bz]

Chemi Shalev - Haaretz - (...) an amateurish pie-in-the-sky, shoot-for-the-moon, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink hodgepodge that promises projects that cannot be implemented, funded by money that does not exist and contingent on a peace deal that will never happen. [Including how Trump-Palestinian relations developed over the years-bz]

Ranjan Solomon/Yasmeen Al-Khoudary/Yara Hawari/Amjad Iraqi/Inčs
Abdel Razek - Palestine Updates - Things are somewhat bleak for the
Palestinians these days. With an American administration gone awry,
Israel has lost self-control and is only going to more extremes than
it already has. The alternative to a peace process that has
collapsed has to be something robust and realistic. At the same time
it should not stop at something easy and simplistic. Oslo was that
and worse. An unprepared PLO was represented by people whose
political acumen was not suited to tough and refined political
dialogue. Such people were there for the PLO to draw from. But
Arafat was insecure and unwilling to risk the unknown and, hence,
lost the plot. Will the Palestinian liberation movement ever respond
proactively and prompt Israel and the international community to
make hard choices? What is realistic? The failed two-state solution
formula – It has proven unfeasible thus far. Or, a one-state
solution which seems may be the inevitable outcome. It may well be
the option that Israel has cornered itself into which will be its
own undoing. For most Israelis, the notion of a one state solution
is a chilling prospect. Palestinians would add up to more or less
half or more of the population. That would mean Israel could cease
to be a majority-Jewish country. This is the Zionist nightmare, but
it is the scare they have brought on themselves.[ak]

Tony Klug - Palestine-Israel Journal - Sandwiched between the
mantras of “There is no alternative to the two-state solution” and
“The two-state solution is dead,” the contemporary debate over how
to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been reduced to
little more than a shouting match between two absolutist camps, both
certain that they are correct. It is possible that they both are. It
is conceivable that the two-state solution is effectively dead — or
at best in intensive care — and, at the same time, that there is no
plausible alternative. If both claims are indeed true, we will have
to brace ourselves for a future of perpetual conflict with all its
toxic overflows. This is a horrendous scenario, but it is not
preordained. It depends on decisions that human beings make.[ak]

Shlomi Eldar -
Al-Monitor
"For the Americans, what is at stake is the prestige and honor of
President Donald Trump. Israel is probably not interested in a
conference of this kind, ... It is no secret... that Israel would
consider the Bahrain conference a success if its participants, at
least most of them, agree at its end that Abbas has ended his
historic role and that the crisis must be resolved by bypassing the
recalcitrant leader." ca

Yaniv Sagee - Givat Haviva - "In these elections, Meretz would not
have survived if the Arabs had not saved it. It is impossible that
this pass by us without serious introspection” says the veteran
Yaniv Sagee, chair of the Meretz Directorate. Sagee is calling for
and acting to establish a new political body, one that is Jewish and
Arab, to include under one canopy representatives or parties from
the Jewish left and from the Arab factions – from the Labor Party
and Meretz and up through Hadash, the Islamic Movement (Raam) and
Taal of Ahmed Tibi. He leaves out the nationalist Balad party.
In Sagee’s vision, the said list will have two chairs – a Jew and an
Arab. The primary aspiration is for one party, with representation
through the “zipper system” (vertical parity) for Jews and Arabs. A
different model, perhaps more realistic, is a left-wing bloc of
Jewish and Arab parties that will run together, in similar fashion
to the four Arab parties in the framework of the Joint List in the
2015 elections.What is certain, states Sagee, is that Meretz will
cease existing if it continues to run alone as it has done up until
now. “Meretz and others on the Israeli left will need to understand
that the State of Israel is on a razor-thin edge and it obligates us
to change”. [ak]

Ramona Wadi - MEMO - "Palestinians want liberation, which is the prelude to the
`better life` that the US and the international community harp about. But
diplomacy is concerned with what Israel wants, so it seeks to extend the meagre
concessions to Palestinians that are nevertheless granted in terms of how Israel
benefits from the agreements" [ry]

MEMO -
Middle East Monitor
"Up till now US officials have been reluctant to cast their eyes in
the direction of Israel in any probe related to interference by a
foreign country. While “Russiagate”, as it’s known, has dominated
the Trump presidency, Israel is often cited as a more obvious case
of meddling by a foreign country...Renowned American intellectual
Noam Chomsky pointed this out earlier this year in an interview. "
ca

David M. Halbfinger -
New York Times
"In a wide-ranging interview at his Jerusalem residence last week,
Mr. Friedman also accused Palestinian leaders of wrongheadedly using
“massive pressure” to deter business leaders from attending an
economic conference that the administration is organizing this month
in Bahrain, where it hopes to impress upon them the financial
windfalls they can expect if they embrace the administration’s peace
plan...But it was on annexation that Mr. Friedman’s remarks were
likely to be read most closely." ca

Meron Rapoport - +972 - Snap elections just weeks after Israelis went the polls
are the result of a rivalry between Liberman and Netanyahu, but that’s just part of
the story. The right is immersed in a crisis of identity, leadership, and politics [ry]

Ramzy Baroud - CounterPunch - “It is only through the resurrection of the PLO
that Palestinians could finally return to their original mission of devising a national
liberation strategy that is not manipulated by money and not subjected to regional
politicking” [ry]